Portsmouth Ordo, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time / Lent Begins
Sunday, February 27: Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday, February 28: Feria
Tuesday, March 1: David, bishop
Wednesday, March 2: Ash Wednesday
Thursday, March 3: Feria (Mass Collect: Katharine Drexel)
Friday, March 4: Feria
Saturday, March 5: Feria
The week begins in Ordinary Time, but offers itself to the season of Lent midweek, with the arrival of Ash Wednesday. Along the way, we celebrate David, sixth-century bishop of Wales. And shortly after the introduction of Lent, our Mass remembers Katharine Drexel (born Catherine Mary Drexel) of Philadelphia, the first American citizen to be canonized. These two saints bear witness, across centuries and across cultures, to the steadfast faith that supports and sustains us, and to which we rededicate ourselves this week for the blessed season of Lent.
Portsmouth Ordo, Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Sunday, February 20: Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday, February 21: Peter Damian, bishop and doctor
Tuesday, February 22: Chair of Saint Peter
Wednesday, February 23: Polycarp, bishop and martyr
Thursday, February 24: Feria
Friday, February 25: Feria
Saturday, February 26: Feria (Mass: Blessed Virgin Mary)
The week is rich in blessings. From Peter Damian (February 21), Benedictine monk and reformer, we learn: “The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits. A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of everyday with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength.” From Polycarp (February 23), the second century martyr, we hear: “Let us then persevere unceasingly in our hope, and in the pledge of our righteousness, that is in Christ Jesus, ‘who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, who did not sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,’ but for our sakes, that we might live in him, he endured all things. Let us then be imitators of his endurance, and if we suffer for his name's sake let us glorify him. For this is the example which he gave us in himself, and this is what we have believed.” And of the Chair of Saint Peter (February 22), Pope St. John Paul II taught: “Today's celebration highlights the role of Peter and his Successors in steering the barque of the Church across this ‘ocean.’ … Let us thank God together for founding his Church on the rock of Peter. As the opening prayer suggests, let us pray intensely that amid the upheavals of the world, she may not be shaken but advance with courage and trust.” We see in the lives of these saints, in their teaching, and in their heritage, the blessings of perseverance, trust, and faith.
Portsmouth Ordo, Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Sunday, February 13: Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday, February 14: Cyril, monk and Methodius, bishop
Tuesday, February 15: Feria
Wednesday, February 16: Feria
Thursday, February 17: Feria
Friday, February 18: Feria
Saturday, February 19: Feria (Mass: Blessed Virgin Mary)
As we move to the middle of the second month of our calendar year, we continue through Ordinary Time, highlighting just one special commemoration, in addition to the Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin on Saturday. It is a double feast, for two brothers both deeply involved in the life of the church in 9th century Byzantium. Cyril’s name is associated with the Cyrillic alphabet, emblematic of the achievements in scholarship and catechetics associated with him, as well as with his brother, Methodius. Both brothers have monastic associations, though their apostolic efforts in the latter half of the ninth century were widespread throughout eastern Europe, where they remain highly revered. Methodius was named Archbishop of Moravia, though the position was contested and he was exiled for several years. The two are known as the “Apostles to the Slavs” and were named co-patrons of Europe together with Saint Benedict, by Pope Saint John Paul II.
Portsmouth Ordo, Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Sunday, February 6: Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday, February 7: Feria
Tuesday, February 8: Josephine Bakhita, virgin
Wednesday, February 9: Feria
Thursday, February 10: Scholastica, virgin
Friday, February 11: Feria (Mass: Our Lady of Lourdes)
Saturday, February 12: Feria (Mass: Blessed Virgin Mary)
The week presents to us three women of faith. The remarkable Josephine Margaret Bakhita (February 8), F.D.C.C. (@1869-1947) was canonized in the year 2000. She was kidnapped as a seven-year-old girl in the Sudan, sold into slavery, a victim of human trafficking, now a patroness of its victims. Brought to Italy, she later converted to Catholicism, discerned a religious vocation, and won a court case to gain her freedom. Her saintly, kind, and joyful presence while attending the door at Canossian schools became widely acknowledged. Scholastica (February 10), Benedict’s twin sister, stands as a pillar in the midst of our week, and as the foundress of Benedictine nuns. We learn in the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great of her devotion and perseverance. She is buried with her brother at Monte Cassino. The week concludes with a celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes (February 10), a title of the Blessed Virgin significant to our monastery and School, with its longstanding participation in pilgrimages to Lourdes, and seen in our beautiful Lourdes grotto. May these three saints, whose lives encompass the two millennia of Christian faith, continue to pray for us.
The Presentation
February 2
“Forty days after Christmas, we celebrate the Lord who enters the Temple and comes to encounter his people. In the Christian East, this feast is called the “Feast of Encounter”: it is the encounter between God, who became a child to bring newness to our world, and an expectant humanity, represented by the elderly man and woman in the Temple. In the Temple, there is also an encounter between two couples: the young Mary and Joseph, and the elderly Simeon and Anna. The old receive from the young, while the young draw upon the old. In the Temple, Mary and Joseph find the roots of their people. This is important because God’s promise does not come to fulfillment merely in individuals, once for all, but within a community and throughout history.” (Pope Francis, 2018 Presentation homily)
Procession for Saint Agatha in Catania, Sicily
February 5
From February 3-5, Catania, in Sicily, is filled with pilgrims and devotees of its great procession and festival for Saint Agatha, one of the largest such gatherings in Italy. This beautiful early Roman saint, consecrated to God in virginity, is said to have been martyred after the unrequited advances of the Roman governor Quintanus, who had her imprisoned, assaulted, and tortured, including the removal of her breasts, an account leading to her present-day patronage of breast cancer. She has long been one of the most venerated of the early martyrs, famously eulogized in a poem by Pope Damasus. Her place in the Roman canon of saints was solidified by our own Gregory the Great, who had a great devotion to her.
February 6
The city of Nagasaki has long been important to Catholicism. An important point in this history was the martyrdom of Paul Miki on February 5, 1597: Miki was a native Japanese convert who joined the Jesuits. During his crucifixion, he famously preached to those around him, noting that he could not be accused of being a foreign presence: “I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ.” Missionaries returning to Japan in the late 19th century found no visible indication of Christian faith, after rigorous and ongoing persecutions. However, thousands in the Nagasaki area had in fact secretly retained their faith in secret. Miki and twenty-five others were canonized in 1862 by Pius IX.
February 8
From "Spe Salvi," encyclical letter of Pope benedict XVI: "The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. ... when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had 'redeemed' her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody."
February 10
Scholastica was the twin sister of Saint Benedict, and one finds their shared grave at the High Altar of the cathedral at Monte Cassino. That abbey’s website states that the two, “were never separated in spirit during their life nor are their bodies separated in their death.” Benedictine tradition holds that Scholastica established a hermitage about five miles from Monte Cassino which is considered to be the first “Benedictine” convent. A most famous story of the two is of Scholastica wanting Benedict to remain with her, perhaps aware that her death was imminent, and upon his refusal praying to God. A terrible storm then arose, forcing Benedict to stay. Asked what she had done, she replied to her brother: “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen.” While historical support for stories of Benedict and Scholastica is limited, their legacy is strong, and Scholastic is considered the foundress of female Benedictines and patroness of all nuns.
Grotto on the Portsmouth Abbey campus
February 11
The designation of this feast day to Our Lady, in her apparition at Lourdes, is one of a group of memorials dedicated to Our Lady with relation to her appearances. Among them are Fatima, Loreto, Guadeloupe, and Mount Carmel, with additional more locally celebrated days. The liturgical feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was established by Pope Leo XIII, and first granted to the Diocese of Tarbes in the year 1890. Less than twenty years later (1907), his successor, Pope St. Pius X proclaimed that it be observed universally. On the centenary of the apparitions to Bernadette, Pope Pius XII wrote: “Every Christian land is a Marian land; there is not a nation redeemed in the blood of Christ which does not glory in proclaiming Mary its Mother and Patroness.” We see this reflected in the United States, whose patroness is the Mary, the Immaculate Conception, a title declared by Mary to Bernadette. We also see this devotion reflected in our own Lourdes grotto on campus.
February 14
This day to commemorate the historically very significant Cyril and Methodius has the unfortunate fate of coinciding with the date associated with the less historical but more romantically appealing Valentine. Known as “The Apostles to the Slavs,” these ninth-century Byzantine scholars are credited with developing the earliest Slavic alphabet. The two were well-educated and well-connected politically, combining skills of scholarship and political savvy in negotiating the difficult tensions of their times. Among their many other duties and accomplishments, Methodius served as an abbot, Cyril a professor of philosophy.
February 21
Winning the approval of Dante Alighieri, 11th century Benedictine and cardinal, Peter Damian, guides him through the sphere of Saturn in Paradiso. Peter Damian was among those pious and dedicated monastics who found themselves called to more active leadership roles in the church. Damian was cautious towards the assumed powers of the human intellect, finding philosophy often overstepping its limitations – yet his theological insights led him to be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI called him, “one of the most significant figures of the 11th century…, a monk, a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform, initiated by the Popes of the time.” (General Audience, 2009) Benedict emphasizes that the Hermitage at Fonte Avellana, to which Damian withdrew, was dedicated to the Holy Cross, “and the Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian more than all the others. ‘Those who do not love the Cross of Christ do not love Christ,’ he said (Sermo XVIII, 11, p. 117).”
February 22
The “Chair of Saint Peter” is both physical object and theological doctrine. In both senses, the chair is centered in St. Peter’s Basilica, which is both the symbol of the magisterial authority of the See, and the location of a now highly ornamented throne. The Catholic Encyclopedia: “During the Middle Ages it was customary to exhibit [the chair] yearly to the faithful; the newly-elected pope was also solemnly enthroned on this venerable chair. . . .” The more recent version is the work of the quintessential Roman master Bernini. Concerning the “theological” chair, Pope Benedict XVI: “This is a very ancient tradition, proven to have existed in Rome since the fourth century. On it we give thanks to God for the mission he entrusted to the Apostle Peter and his Successors. ‘Cathedra’ literally means the established seat of the Bishop, placed in the mother church of a diocese which for this reason is known as a ‘cathedral’; it is the symbol of the Bishop’s authority and in particular, of his ‘magisterium’, that is, the evangelical teaching which, as a successor of the Apostles, he is called to safeguard and to transmit to the Christian Community."
February 23
Polycarp is considered one of the three great “Apostolic Fathers,” together with Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. Irenaeus heard him speak, and he is counted as a disciple of John the Apostle, providing a historic link to the apostles. He disputed the reductive Christology of Marcion. And if St. Paul is considered foundational in articulating the faith, Polycarp was crucial in the preservation of the orthodoxy articulated by Paul, against his cooption by early Gnosticism. The “Martyrdom of Polycarp” provides the oldest authentic account of an early Christian’s martyrdom.